


Here Is A Secret Deeper Than Language

by sageness



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Department X, Espionage, F/M, Family, Happy Ending, KGB, M/M, Multi, Negotiations, Polyamory, Red Room, SHIELD, Secrets, Soviet History, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, comics canon, lost loves found, mental programming, mention of canonical miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 15:03:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2154948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageness/pseuds/sageness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a long, cold journey from that fire in Stalingrad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here Is A Secret Deeper Than Language

**Author's Note:**

> The underage warning depends on the vagaries of the timeline. Regardless, all sex here is consensual.
> 
> This is a comics-heavy fusion with the MCU. The timelines of Steve's origin story don't line up terribly well, so I pushed some late 1941 comics canon forward a few months to better match CATFA. I've also conflated both Nick Furys. Because reasons. *activates handwavium* 
> 
> The Soviet propaganda poster is legit and kind of terrifyingly awesome. I like to think it stared down on Natasha from the wall in the Red Room training facilities for years on end.
> 
> Title is from "Poem of the End," part IX, by Marina Tsvetaeva.
> 
> The initial seed for this came from the "family" challenge at fan_flashworks. Many thanks to the lovely folks at ffw_social and ushobwri for the support!
> 
> Special thanks to Moriann, Malnpudl, and Monanotlisa for beta-reading the first draft, to SamJohnsson for signing off on the final draft & to Petra for cheerleading me out of a major block, and thanks also to those who pitched in with New York help! All errors are mine.

_"Warrior, answer Motherland with victory!"_ Soviet propaganda poster, 1942.

  
  
  
  


1\. 

Natasha settled on the narrow office's small green couch, let her posture relax as it would, and waited. Dr. Ramamurthy was a stout, middle-aged woman wearing a navy pantsuit that poorly hid the Taser in her coat pocket. Natasha was reasonably certain she was otherwise unarmed, and also that there must be a gun in the doctor's desk drawer. She did work for SHIELD, after all. Natasha was dressed in dark gray cargo pants and a long sleeved black t-shirt with "Property of SHIELD" stamped in gray ink on the inside. The boots weren't even close to field-rated, and not merely because they didn't conceal any knives.

The pleasantries passed. The minutes began to tick, and Natasha began to wonder what Fury would do if she failed this part of the SHIELD intake process altogether. Across from her, Dr. Ramamurthy nested in a red velvet wing-back with a chenille blanket draped over one arm to ward off the chill. She looked cozy, and also unfazed by the inevitable impasse between them. "Natasha, I know you don't want to talk to me," she said. "Given what little I know of your life, that seems entirely sensible." Her voice was musical and held traces of a Mumbai accent with hints, Natasha thought, of Los Angeles. No wonder she was cold. 

Dr. Ramamurthy plodded on. "In fact, you may be unaware that virtually all SHIELD agents view appointments like this one with discomfort. You must realize my job is to help you cope with difficult and stressful situations, such as your transition to working with us here." 

Natasha said nothing.

A month had passed since Fury had convinced her to board that plane with him, and she'd been here ever since. She'd managed to make it clear that this was a job she wanted and that she would refrain from breaking out of SHIELD custody while she gained their trust. However, she still felt absolutely no need to reveal a lifetime's worth of secrets to people she'd known for only days or weeks. Fury, at least, seemed not to hold that wariness against her...much. She was the Black Widow, after all. Her recruitment was a career-making coup for him, if she cooperated.

She was still semi-confined in a barracks suite and couldn't leave the floor without escort, but every day Fury spent a few hours with her, walking her through the building and offering rewards like computer time, better clothes, and the promise of her own civilian apartment in exchange for answers to his and other SHIELD analysts' questions. In turn, she gathered her secrets close and observed the shape of what they asked and the voids of what they didn't.

At least until she grew bored and needed to remind them she was here of her own accord. There were only so many variations on: "Point me at a target, Fury. That's what I'm here for, isn't it?" Lips pressed flat, arms folded over her chest, feet poised to launch herself into the air at speed. "You don't need to know everywhere I've ever been."

He never stopped asking questions, though, and when he focused on current events and her recent movements, it was fine. She could tell him about HYDRA cells around the world, human trafficking rings, arms dealers of the kind worth his attention. She had good intel for them, as long as they didn't project the full roster of SHIELD assets killed in action on the wall and expect her to confirm which deaths she'd been involved in. The answer was dozens, but she wasn't going to tell them that.

The rest of her days were spent memorizing SHIELD protocol, training in the small gym near her quarters that no one else seemed to use, and sitting through meeting after interrogation after interrogation disguised as meeting. 

Dr. Ramamurthy sighed. "This reminds me of trying to outstare a cat. One doesn't. Let us return to the basics, then. You have said that you were born in Volgograd. Perhaps you would tell me about your mother?"

And still she had to suffer even gentle attempts to brush the dust off of her past. "You already know that I was an orphan."

"Your file says so, yes." Dr. Ramamurthy smiled and her face creased in a way that spoke of worry over teenagers. There was something steady and dangerously appealing in it. Natasha wondered if the SHIELD agents under the doctor's care were the cause of the worry lines, or if Dr. Ramamurthy had somehow managed to achieve this position and have children of her own. Surely that was unlikely.

"Fury already asked me that," Natasha said pleasantly. "I told him. End of story." She could have sounded snappish, but Natasha was versed in every interrogation technique that existed. This process would take however long they wanted it to take, and she could wait indefinitely. It had only been a month, after all, and even Fury had bored of dancing the same dance every day. With any luck, she could turn that to work in her favor.

"There are a great many stories about your life in your file, Natasha. Conflicting ones."

Natasha nodded slightly and didn't blink, didn't shift position against the green damask cushions, didn't shrug. She was calm. She was the embodiment of calm. She could outwait anyone, even felines.

Dr. Ramamurthy tried again. "Lies are, of course, part of the...should I call it a business? I won't insult you by calling it a game."

Natasha lifted a shoulder in an indifferent shrug. "It wouldn't be an insult. If you've worked here for as long as it seems you have, then you're aware of the complexities. Some parts are very much a game. Other parts are business, others politics. You're curious how I perceive my occupation." 

Dr. Ramamurthy smiled. "Other parts are personal?"

What an inane question. She had hoped for better. Natasha bit back a sigh. "Isn't that true of any job?"

"But being an elite covert agent with decades of experience isn't just any job. There are exceedingly few people in the world who do your job." After Natasha's silence had stretched beyond ten seconds, Dr. Ramamurthy said, "All right. We'll leave that for now." Natasha noted the frustration showing in the lines around Dr. Ramamurthy's eyes, and that her voice was firm, commanding, even, when she held Natasha's gaze and said, "Tell me something true."

Natasha let herself show some exasperation. "I haven't lied to you."

"You also haven't volunteered one single thing." 

And clearly that was to be the price of today's session if Natasha didn't want a flag in her file and another hopeless clash with Fury. She pursed her lips, let her eyelashes fall, took a deep breath, glanced up, and went through the slow presentation of grudging capitulation. Meanwhile, she was rapidly sifting through memories to find one she could give up with minimal risk. It would harm no one if she shared an old memory, a small memory, stripped of names and dates. 

"I had a job once as a translator in Berlin," she said finally. "I liked my colleagues. They liked me. Before you ask, I didn't kill any of them."

Dr. Ramamurthy's tone was neutral but her smile was warm. "It was an intelligence gathering assignment, I take it?" 

Natasha didn't blink. "I enjoyed having colleagues. I was sorry to leave at the end. All of that is true."

Dr. Ramamurthy nodded, and the expression in her eyes said that she had heard Natasha's unspoken, "Of course not," with perfect clarity. In fact, the translation job had been her cover while she drew the target out and her partner Vasily traced the leak to the British Embassy. The target's office had shared the same typing pool with hers; it had been a lively place and she had done ordinary translation work for an ordinary salary. It had been fun, in its way, for the several weeks it lasted. Then she'd cashed her last paycheck, eliminated the target, and landed in Hong Kong before breakfast the next day. But no one at SHIELD needed to know any of that, even if it had been decades ago. Khrushchev had only been a few years in office. Sputnik had not yet been launched. It had only been a year since the serum she and Ivan had taken. It had saved his life, yes, and also made them both stronger, faster, ageless, more like the Winter Soldier.

"Next time, we will unpack some of that," Dr. Ramamurthy said, and it was at least half a warning. Then the guard's three-beat tap at the door marked the end of the session.

  
  
  
  


2.

"No, I want a story!" she demanded, clambering onto Uncle Vanya's lap.

"Oh, Natushka," he said and laid a smacking kiss on the top of her head. "One story, child, and then you go to bed."

"But I want Vasilisa, too!" she cried. The tale of Vasilisa and the magic doll who took care of her after her mother died was Natasha's very favorite of all, except for stories about her own mother.

"Ah-ah-ah." Uncle Vanya wagged an imperious finger. "Choose one."

Natasha stuck out her lower lip, but after a moment she was too busy thinking to pout. She decided she could ask for Vasilisa tomorrow. "Was Mama brave?"

Uncle Vanya nodded, and he looked deadly serious when he said, "Yes, your mama was very brave." It was different from his voice when he told her she was the daughter of Mother Russia herself. When he talked about Mama, he sounded real in the way he and his troops talked about fallen comrades. When he talked about Mother Russia, he had his fairytale voice on, even when he said Natasha would grow up to be a good comrade and fight for the motherland, just like Uncle Vanya did.

She was eight before he told her the true story of the woman in the fire in Stalingrad. The woman could have been anyone: Natasha's mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, or a heroic neighbor risking her life for a child. He didn't know when Natasha's birthday was or if she had grandparents somewhere who had looked for her. Uncle Vanya had lost his baby sister. God, or maybe the Party, had given him Natasha instead. 

Natasha received the news as calmly as the steady snow falling on their tent. She could see perfectly well there was nothing to be done. She could not go to Stalingrad. Her passport officially bound her to Ivan Petrovich's location. The civil unrest had killed many and scattered others to the winds, and now there were Stalin's purges, too. Soldiers whispered of disappearances, forced exile, and camps filling with hundreds of thousands of prisoners, many who had done nothing wrong but be crushed by the machine of collectivization. Seeking tales of lost Romanovs would be an absurd risk, even if they weren't related to the tsarist line at all.

Besides, she was happy living with Uncle Vanya's division. His soldiers had found books for her in a village school and took turns teaching her. She had her own knives now, too, just in case, because bandits and gangs of abandoned children were a growing problem. Soon, she would be big enough to shoot a gun. Soon, she could be a soldier, too.

  
  
  
  


3.

"Some secret meeting," she muttered, eyeing the blood washing down the hotel room's gleaming white sink.

Fury snarled, "Oh, don't you start, Agent Super Spy. How about you get to work on getting us the fuck out of here."

"Mm." She still didn't know why she put up with this crap. It wasn't her fault Fury's meeting had gone bad or that his allies at the table had double-crossed him. And, yes, it was so terrible for the great Nick Fury to need to call her personally to come to his rescue, all to preserve his precious reputation at SHIELD—or else because whatever the hell he was doing was so far off the books that she was the only one he knew would keep quiet. "You should have let me vet them," she said and ripped a towel into bandages. "There's no exit wound, so keep your arm still if you want to keep your range of motion."

He grunted. "You've never even met these guys."

"Krhovski worked for Landau in Tbilisi. You know the op, three years ago this May?" She aimed a meaningful stare at his reflection.

"Are you shitting me?" He glared at her in the mirror. "Romanov!"

"Nobody was asking for my input, remember?" She bound his shoulder tightly enough to make him think twice about using it, and noticed vaguely that he was still using the same aftershave after all these years. It was something subtle; she'd never figured out what brand it was. Meanwhile, the rest of her brain was assessing and dismissing exit strategies. "If we need to get out of here unseen, going down the elevator shaft will be best. I assume your bad guys have someone on security cams, and this place doesn't have a helipad—not that I have a helicopter on speed dial tonight. Do you?"

He grunted a negative. "Not for this." 

No, otherwise he would have been plucked off a balcony forty minutes ago and wouldn't be hiding in an empty hotel room. "Can you climb or do you want a harness? Let me see how much blood you've lost." 

She frowned at the grayish tinge to his lips and pulled back his lower eyelids. Interesting. An ordinary human would be going into shock; he wasn't. But the strain of climbing down a skyscraper's elevator maintenance ladder might do it. She left the bathroom and began cutting a bed sheet into more strips. She took a full ten minutes to do it well, braiding and knotting so it would hold him in a fall. "This looks ridiculous," he said once she'd tied him into the harness and forced a spare carabiner from her belt into place. 

"You're going to have to run. Once we get to the subbasement, we cross through to the car park and—"

"Been to this rodeo before, Romanov."

"Right. We get into the shaft in less than ten seconds, we might not die."

Wincing, he slowly forced his coat back on over the bandage and harness; it was a tight fit, but they wanted the camouflage. She wiped away telltale fingerprints and bathroom blood drips and flushed the evidence, and together they ran silently through the night-darkened corridor to the elevator bank. Natasha forced open the door of the nearest, braced Fury as he swung wide into the maintenance channel, clipped him onto the side cable, and led the way down and down.

The part where the hotel's subbasement was crawling with henchmen who ultimately worked for HYDRA was not actually a surprise. They'd created a nice little checkpoint at the service ramp from the car park next door. The surprise was that the ordinary steel door that should have been further up the same wall was gone. "There was an access door right there," she whispered fiercely, gesturing at a section of bricked up wall. "I swear, the last time I was here it went through."

Fury's glare wasn't any different from his other glares, except for how it failed to hide his pain and exhaustion. "Yeah, I bet you're why they remodeled."

She tilted her head in assent. It was entirely possible. "How dare they learn from their mistakes," she muttered, quickly noting the entirely excessive number of enemy positions on this floor. "Why do they never think of our needs?" 

"You've been spending too much time with Barton." Fury turned slowly, also casing the lack of handy exits. "You could try a ventilation shaft."

"You couldn't." As if he still needed to test her. "And I didn't come all this way just to leave you behind."

"Point."

She sighed. "They'll leave. Enough of them will leave that we could shoot our way through with decent odds." She eyed his shoulder. "Probably."

Fury huffed a laugh. "Your car's not going to be within fifty feet of that ramp, is it?" She shook her head. "Right. There's an electrical closet down here. We'll wait, they'll leave, they'll never know we were here. I'm patient."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow and didn't toss back the pun. Fury didn't make puns unless he was ranting in the face of someone who thought they were more clever than he was, and pissed off besides. "You're not going to bleed to death on me, are you? Because I think Maria would have me killed if you died on my watch."

Fury rolled his eyes. "I'll show you bleeding to death, Widow. You want to hurry up and get that door open, or do I need to pick the lock myself?"

The electrical closet was tiny, slightly warmer than the rest of the basement, which Natasha found comfortably cold, and constructed of unpainted cinder blocks. The massive wall of circuit breakers hummed faintly. It was soothing, and she wasn't surprised when Fury drifted off to sleep against the wall after twenty minutes. The bullet wound in his shoulder had finally clotted, but as soon as he jostled the arm again, he'd shift the slug and inevitably tear something. She let him sleep. After an hour, she snuck out for another round of recon. The entire HYDRA unit appeared to have gathered at the access ramp, milling and restless. The rest of the basement was deserted.

"Sitrep?" he asked quietly when she returned.

"Same. They seem bored and frustrated, though. Shouldn't be much longer. How do you feel?" 

"Like I got shot. You know what you can do?"

"What?" She sat down on the cold concrete and took his pulse. Rest was helping. His skin was less ashen, too.

"Finish your damned intake interview."

She laughed, softly but long. "I haven't been a probie in years, Nick."

He snorted. "You are a living weapon, Romanov. You might have been a probie when you were, what, fifteen? Less?"

She stared at him, watching his body language, measuring how much pain he was hiding from her. "Why does it matter?" It had been her standard answer when he'd first brought her in. It was practically a reflex.

"We need to know where all of our agents come from." That had been his standard response back then, too, and he continued with the second part: "It's about our vulnerabilities and our strengths." Then he sighed. "I know you didn't emerge fully grown from a vat because you've been around longer than the Soviets could do that shit. Also, this fucking hurts. Talk to me. Get my mind off the raggedy hole in my shoulder."

She snorted. "Seriously? You're playing on my sympathies? When have you ever known me to have sympathies?"

His eyebrows shot up and he flashed a brief, triumphant grin at her. "Hah, I got this one: Germany, nineteen, what, seventy-five? Eighty? You killed a female assassin and spared her daughter for absolutely no reason other than that she was a kid. Bet you got in trouble for it, too."

She glared back at him. Right on all counts. "What do you want to know?" she asked with a sigh.

He hummed. "Go with the probie question. When did you start, really?"

She weighed her options. She'd been a SHIELD agent for going on five years now, and it was relevant that he'd called her tonight instead of a SHIELD strike team. That definitely meant something, although she wasn't yet certain of what. 

A fair bit of her distant past couldn't be corroborated by anyone anymore. That was also relevant. There were plenty of stories comprising the myth of the Black Widow, but the fewer confirmed truths that could be leveraged against her, the safer everyone was.

She leaned against the wall and drew up her knees. From here, she could keep an eye on him while also covering the door. "All right, when I was a probie, if that's even the right word for it," she said quietly. "I was ten when I was enrolled in the first training school. I was thirteen when the Red Room academy took me."

"The first one wasn't Red Room?" There was no expression in his voice at all, and that meant he knew something, or thought he did.

She gestured vaguely. "Maybe it was an offshoot? I was a kid, not an administrator." And if Fury didn't know about the multiple horrors Department X had held under its aegis, she was a fucking X-Man.

"What about the brainwashing?" When she didn't reply, he said, "I know damned well there was brainwashing, Romanov."

She raised an eyebrow. "You're asking the patient what the doctors did to her while she was under?"

"That mean you don't know?" His eyebrow matched hers.

She hadn't said that, and his challenge was just one more volley in the game. She considered the intel available to him through other channels, both truth and rumor. Virtually everyone was dead now anyway, and a little bit of ancient history would get him off her back, at least for a while.

"There was a program to implant and remove memories," she began, "regularly, over and over for years. At first it was a component of our training, but it continued as part of mission preparation and debriefing. It became very difficult to tell truth from fiction." She held his gaze for a moment. "Anyone who might have been able to separate and verify my real memories from the false ones is long dead. Assuming they could have done it at all."

"Huh." He sat for a while, seeming to mull that over. "So you really don't know where you came from."

"That is where I came from," she snapped. "Before that? You've heard the story, I'm sure: that I was a baby thrown from a fire in Volgograd. A woman told them my name and the building collapsed on her as they caught me."

"That's—"

She cut him off. "It might be complete fiction. It might be the complete truth." She shook her head. "It's a moot point, either way."

Fury hummed. "That's not what they taught the Black Widow girls, though, is it?"

"What?"

"There's an old file. A report on the indoctrination program of Black Widow agents..."

"Bald speculation," she said.

"Cold war espionage," he countered. "Blurry photos of a handwritten KGB file. The CIA had no idea what they had, so it sat in some file cabinet for decades." He shrugged. "At the time, did you believe you had parents? Living ones, I mean?"

Natasha tipped her head back and tried to banish a wave of skin prickling nausea. That file had a date on it, surely—a date from decades before Stalingrad changed its name to Volgograd—and Fury wasn't quoting it at her. Clever bastard, stringing fragments of the truth together like this. "Of course I did," she said at last. "We all did." 

The woman she remembered wore a brown dress and a patterned kerchief over her hair. She had a warm smile and a broad lap. She was on her factory Women's Committee, a model comrade. There were occasional letters written in a clumsy hand and always signed, "I kiss you, daughter. I am proud of you." She had worked in a munitions factory, they'd told her. Or an airplane factory. Or a uniform factory. Or a boot factory. Always a factory. Always in a small city far away, much too far away for Natasha to think of going to find her.

She had never been real. Either the woman in the photos was an actor or was some general's secretary dressed up for the part. 

When she looked down again, Fury was watching. "It was all lies. We were children and they molded us like clay."

He nodded. "I'm sorry." 

He wasn't really, or wasn't much. They'd each lost the luxury of human sympathy long ago, assuming they'd ever had it to begin with. But she'd given him something he'd wanted for a long time, and only at the cost of revealing how defenseless she'd been, once, when she was a child.

She got to her feet. It was time for more recon. Then she'd get him to a doctor he owned and go home. Whatever he was up to, tonight wasn't going on any official records, and she wasn't happy with the state of the balance sheet between them. Tomorrow, maybe she'd figure out what the hell he'd been doing with a slimeball like Krhovski.

  
  
  
  


4.

"Yasha," she murmured against his throat as he thrust into her. In the apartments below, the building was settling into the quieter hum of true night. The walls always had ears in places like this, but the attic room they'd been assigned was a haven of relative privacy, and he'd given her the secret of his real name. No one but she knew the Winter Soldier had a name.

He laughed nervously, then whispered so softly she had to read his lips, "I should never have told you that, should I? You're going to get us both in trouble."

"Never," she panted. She curled up and kissed him hard on the mouth. "Never, Yasha."

He moved his hand on her and changed his angle, and for a moment she could no longer hear the squeaking leather straps supporting the thin mattress or the freezing wind howling outside. Her pleasure was rattling her apart at the seams, shaking her to the quick, and she kept trembling under him as he kissed her again and again and then finally sped up to finish.

Afterward, more kissing and cuddling of a too rare and naked kind. In the dormitory at the Red Room, physical affection had been violently discouraged. Black Widow agents must be self-sufficient, they were taught: these girls did not need hugs. And yet when she was small, long before she went away to school, when she wasn't boarding with a family wherever Uncle Ivan's division was stationed, she had learned the physicality of soldiers, like wild animals pressing close to keep the winter ice at bay. She had gone with them in the field when it appeared more dangerous for Uncle Ivan to leave her behind than risk her life in battle. Those freezing nights, the whole unit huddled together under all the furs and tarpaulins they could find, one great stinking heap of soldiers, the occasional camp followers who had wiled their way in for the night, and the young red-haired girl they all protected.

"Natalia, love," he said, and kissed her temple. 

"Me, too," she said, stroking his broad chest, avoiding the rough red line where metal met skin. She had known a great many amputees during and after the war. There was a large and creative industry of prosthetic limbs, but none so advanced as what Department X had forced on him. Still, every amputee's scars were tender, and she didn't want to hurt him.

Yasha shut his eyes and his face creased with a wholly nonphysical pain. "What we are. What we both are," he said under his breath.

She snorted. "We're stories, my love. We are what they made us. What do we even know of our lives before?"

"I know," he murmured brokenly and draped his flesh arm over his face. "I don't even know if that's even my name. 'James.' It doesn't sound right, and yet it's a hell of a lot more right than Winter Soldier."

"James," she pronounced carefully. "Yakov. Yasha. Yashka." She tilted her head and kissed his soft shoulder. "Jim. Jimmy. Jay-yeem?"

He laughed softly. "Jamie. That one can be a girl's name, too. Your accent's getting better."

"Thank you. Do you have any idea what your mother called you?"

He shut his eyes. Then he opened them, scowling, and shook his head. "Drawing a blank, as usual."

"I'm sorry," she said and kissed him again.

"What did they call you? Natalia?" he asked as he stroked her side, her arm, her breast, her shoulder. Such nice big hands. He was gentle with her, too, far more so than he had to be, as if it were a luxury. All this was a luxury, and she should be careful not to forget it.

"Ivan said the woman who gave me to him called me Natasha. He used to call me Natushka when I was small."

"Natashenka?"

"That's another one." She smiled. "There are more. We have many diminutives in Russian, yes? You can call me Natashenka if you want to."

"If we..." He swallowed hard, and she could see his thoughts in his eyes, wondering how long they would get to have this before their superiors took the memories away again. If she and Yasha would even remember knowing one another next time. If there would be a next time at all. But surely there would be. They worked well together. They had an excellent success rate: one hundred percent kill rate and only one accidental discovery out of the fourteen undercover missions they'd had together. Or at least that was what they could recall when they put their heads together. Maybe a hundred failures had been removed from their minds; it was possible. She curled deeper into his embrace. Every erasure was hell.

They lay quietly for a while, caressing each other's skin and sharing the occasional kiss. The flower-printed duvet was a cozy weight on Natasha's legs, and Yasha's metal arm was warm with their body heat.

"Tomorrow," he began.

"Yes."

"I see Dmitri Popovich at ten. Is my uniform pressed?"

She sighed. "I'll do it in the morning."

"I can manage. Soldiers are used to it."

She whispered, "I am a soldier, or did you forget? Besides, I'm supposed to be your devoted young bride. I'll do it. Then I will stand in line for bread and hope for some eggs this time. In the afternoon I will meet Masha and find out where the Americans go on Thursdays."

"And I will find Boris Ilyich's hidden files," he answered, even quieter.

"What do you want for supper?" she asked aloud.

He laughed. Under his breath he said, "If we survive until supper," and continued louder, "I will enjoy whatever you make, darling, just as always. Surprise me."

"All right." She smiled and pulled up the duvet. "I love you. Sleep well." She said those words as loudly as she wanted to, then she kissed him again and rolled over to sleep. 

He switched off the lamp and curled up behind her. "Natashenka, Natasha, Natalia," he murmured, and kissed her bare shoulder. Then in English so soft she barely heard it, "My best girl."

  
  
  
  


5.

"Sit still and be a good girl now."

"Yes, professor."

The metal claws that held her eyelids up went away and she shut her eyes gratefully, even as a flood of unshed tears fell down her cheeks. She felt the professor unbuckle the wide leather belts restraining her ankles, then her wrists. She scrubbed hard at her face and blew her nose when a handkerchief was pressed into her hand.

"Tell me about the ballet, Natasha."

"I study under Oksana Bolishinko in Moscow. Right now we are rehearsing Swan Lake, and the training is very difficult. She approves of my _grand jeté_ form but says my leaps must attain greater height. It will mean extra practice but it will be beautiful."

"And your parents?" the professor asked.

"My mother works in an aviation factory and is on the women's committee there. My father designs televisions for the glory of the Party. They used to live in Stalingrad but moved to Smolensk when Papa was offered a position. It was a great honor. They write to me when they can."

"And your Uncle Ivan," he said, more as a statement than a question.

"Uncle Vanya is a major in the army. A few months ago he sent me a letter from Belarus. He is very encouraging and always tells me to work hard." She yawned and then yawned again, even bigger.

"Sleepy?" asked the professor. He was a blurry spot against the room's light blue walls.

"Ballerinas must practice sixteen hours every day," she recited carefully. She didn't miss the claws that pinned her eyes open, but without them she was almost asleep in the chair. Still, she held herself quietly and didn't let herself drift off. Bad things happened to girls who weren't vigilant. 

Next to her, the professor sighed and spoke over his shoulder. "Sergei, call the next one. We have to account for the speed the brain processes the information. Too much and the mind says zzzzt! No more."

Then Natasha was on her feet, stumbling, and hands were guiding her out. "To bed, child," someone said, but she was asleep before she got there.

  
  
  
  


6.

"Oh, baby, look at you." Fingers tugged at Natasha's skirt, pressed into her thighs, skated over her garters and higher. She climbed a little more securely onto Fyodor's lap and curled in to nibble his ear. Her fingers made quick work of his tie, his shirt buttons, his cuffs once she detached his roaming hands from her nether regions, and, finally, his belt. He pulled her dress over her head and his eyes went so wide she changed her plan. Again.

"So young," he whispered, and he looked almost afraid to have her where he wanted her. He let out a nervous laugh. "Suddenly I imagine your mother standing over us with a rolling pin, about to bash my head in." 

She laughed and poked him in the chest as she thought as quickly as she could; she could not afford to lose him now. Already he had refused to join her in more drinks, or even snacks, claiming he'd had his fill at the party and now his only appetite was for her. There had been no way to dose him that wouldn't raise an alarm, and his rank was too high to proceed without certain proof. "There's little risk of that happening," she said, putting a flirtatious spark into it.

"Oh?" His eyes were wide, so trusting, interested, and his gaze kept drifting to her breasts, small and high though they were.

"My mother died years ago." She made her tone as indifferently casual as she could. "She won't be coming after either one of us." His smile was weak, but it was there, and she rewarded it with a lingering kiss. Then she gave him her best smoldering gaze and murmured into his ear, "I really am older than I look. Let me show you."

The shiver that wracked his body was gratifying. Then Natasha slid her way down and gave him her mouth. He was far too keyed up, and she needed him asleep. She judged two orgasms would suffice.

She liked him less when he held her head; the nicer ones were content with only stroking her hair. She liked him more when he licked her to a completely unfeigned climax while he grew hard again. Not that liking him was relevant to the mission. Nor was her own pleasure, although it was nice when its potential was remembered.

"You are so small, though," he said when he had her writhing happily on his fingers. "I'm certain you're not yet twenty. Are you even sixteen? Not even my wife was this tight and she was sixteen when I married her."

She did not reply with, "Do you always talk about your wife's cunt when fucking girls younger than your own daughter?" She let her eyebrow say it for her.

He laughed. "Beautiful Katen'ka. Such a charming creature. Let me—" He pushed her legs back until they lay upon his shoulders and began to plow into her. It was a long while before he found his second orgasm. She spent the time urging his bulk into different positions, making a game of it, so that she could better examine the room. This was a two-room apartment and not the family home. Fyodor was high enough in the Party and at the Defense Ministry that he had attained this _pied-à-terre_ here in Moscow, a dacha far in the south, which was where his wife and children were now, and his own automobile.

KGB agents had been watching Comrade Chenkin for months. Gradually they had discovered the existence of his safe and camera, and had chronicled the ways in which his family was doing rather too well for even his Ministry salary. That afternoon, an officer had noticed a file missing. A telephone operator had marked his call leaving a message for a Mr. Jones at the British embassy. A last minute surprise party for Chenkin's boss was arranged that Chenkin could not have skipped without causing significant upset. Natasha was positioned with orders to obtain proof and, if proof was found, then to proceed accordingly. 

Once he was finally asleep, she cracked the small safe in the other room and retrieved an unexpectedly large stack of top secret documents. In her hands, she held missile plans, atomic progress, even details on the cosmonaut program. It was a terrible betrayal of the motherland, much worse than she'd expected and she was full of righteous fury at this...this traitor. Silently, she removed her weapon from her purse, folded the sheaf of papers into the slit in the lining, and screwed the long silencer into the barrel of her handgun. Then she went back into the bedroom and pulled her panties and dress back on. She took careful aim, and called out formally, "Fyodor Vasilevich Chenkin." 

"Mmm?" Blearily he opened his eyes. "Katya? You're dressed."

It was greatly preferred for targets to be well apprised of their own executions, so she made the pronouncement clearly enough for any KGB listeners—and she had no doubt there were listeners—to hear and approve: "Your actions are known, traitor to Russia." 

It was a split second for him to register the gun in her hand, to part his lips. Before he could move, she shot him twice in the head.

  
  
  
  


7.

She'd received the news in a voicemail. When she asked Fury to explain, all he would say was that she had graduated and he didn't have time to talk. She knew bullshit when she smelled it, of course, and knowing him, he was doing something so top secret that managing her personally was too great a risk for either of them. So, after all these years, she had a new handler. Now she was just like all the other agents under Fury's command. Finally. 

She was waiting in Coulson's office, sipping coffee and watching the snow fall outside his window when he hurried in, juggling an armful of files and gear. "Sorry, just give me a moment," he told her, dropping a small duffel bag on the floor. It clanked suspiciously. "I had back-to-back meetings, all the file requests arrived at once, and they're fumigating the men's locker room." His tone was of amiable complaint as he put down the papers, his briefcase, three magazines of .44 caliber ammunition, a foam stress ball made to look like the earth, a pair of wire cutters, a roll of lock-picking tools, an empty ankle holster, and three small canisters that probably contained toxic gas. Then he started on his suit pockets, drawing out an apple, four shuriken, and a two inch tall black oval bottle with no label. He removed the lid, revealing an atomizer, and sniffed curiously.

"Don't," she said before he could spray it. She held out her hand and flicked her fingers. "Give me that. Please." He must have heard the ice in her tone because he simply passed it over.

She wafted the lid near her face, because she had to be certain. Then she put the lid back on. "Where did you get this? When?"

Coulson held her gaze. She could see him cataloging her rage, noting that she now held the bottle in a white-knuckled grip. "A few minutes ago. Director Fury slipped it into my pocket and said, 'In case of emergency,' as he left. He didn't say what it was."

Natasha let out a breath. Of course he had. She didn't open her fist. 

"I don't know anything else about it," he added. "I was going to look it up after we were done." She still didn't say anything. "Do you want to save me a file query?"

"Not...particularly. Give me a minute please."

"Sure," he said, and went back to sorting things into drawers and cabinets. He turned his back to her. He gave her any number of opportunities to...she wasn't sure. She wondered vaguely if he was attempting to respect her privacy.

Damn Fury, she thought as the minutes passed, even as the part of her mind not enraged at him was already storing this away as leverage against him. It would be worth a significant favor, probably. In the meantime Coulson was waiting, watching her again, however politely.

"It's a chemical pheromone compound," she said in a flat voice. "It was created to prevent Black Widow operatives from attacking or disobeying their superior officers. The generals demanded it as a condition of the program's approval, so that we couldn't kill them in their sleep."

Coulson resumed his seat, his desk clear now but for the stack of files. "I see." He paused, probably speculating on how Fury had acquired the compound in the first place, but his eyes were anything but hostile. "What do you want us to do with it?" he asked her.

She almost said something glib, but his eyes were sincere and she was angry. "I want to incinerate it. I want to remove all records of the formula from the face of the planet," she said. "It's my kryptonite, and now that the other Widow agents are dead, I'm the only possible target for it." 

"I assume Fury has more where this came from," he said quietly.

She nodded. "I am aware of the supplier. At this time I can't prevent Fury from acquiring more." She sighed. At least the formula wasn't in any of the SHIELD databases she had accessed, and she had set flags to alert her if anything resembling it was ever uploaded.

Coulson nodded. He didn't say anything else. He didn't argue or attempt to defend Fury, and she had known Coulson for enough years to assume his silence meant something.

Professor Kudrina had confessed that it was her singular cologne that had enabled Fury to bring Natasha in all those years ago. It had forced Natasha to trust him on a fundamental, biochemical level, and also not to kill him even when he had richly deserved it. In his belief that the Black Widow and SHIELD would be good for one another, he would have done anything to get her on his side, and had. 

Professor Kudrina had compared the cologne's effect to the feeling you had for a loved one you would do anything to protect, no matter how much you also wanted to strangle them.

After a few moments, Natasha gritted out, "Tactically, I understand." She scowled, still gripping the cologne bottle. "There's a need to be able to take all of us down, if somehow we all turned into evil supervillains or something."

"But," Coulson prompted. He was still radiating calm, and damn him that it was helping.

"But I've had the shit beaten out of me by someone wearing this stuff, Coulson. I literally couldn't lift a finger to defend myself." She leveled a glare across the desk. "I hate that this is in the world. Human will should not have an off-switch, and that I'm the only one it works on just makes it personal."

"I agree."

"I mean it. If I ever need to be taken down by SHIELD, I'd rather you just shot me. Please. And you can put that in my file."

Coulson nodded. "I understand, and in the event, I'd rather shoot you than deprive you of your free will. I'm not interested in handling enslaved agents. As far as I'm concerned, an agent with no choice over her own loyalties is of no use to me."

She swallowed hard. "Thank you."

"Keep that," he said, gesturing, "and I'm requesting that you not tell me what happens to it, Agent Romanov. That's information I don't want to have."

She shoved the bottle into an inside coat pocket and had to quash her relief before it showed on her face. 

When she looked up, Coulson was smiling wryly. "Well, that wasn't the beginning I'd hoped we'd have as a new team, but I'm glad it's out of the way."

She made herself shrug nonchalantly. "I've had worse."

His lips didn't quite twitch, and she remembered this was supposed to be a briefing on her next assignment. "Have you ever been to Smolensk?" he asked, sliding a file folder across his desk.

She sipped deeply of her coffee, covering; she had to think. Her parents, except no, that hadn't been real, and it had been seventy years ago besides. She didn't know what she could trust Coulson with yet. Up through Level Seven clearance, SHIELD officially had no idea of her true age, although their wildest guesses weren't entirely out of the ballpark. The issue of the pheromone spray, however, had been a much bigger icebreaker than either of them was quite ready for. Damn Fury and his machinations.

"Not lately," she answered, thinking of missions from long before she knew SHIELD existed as a separate entity from the CIA and MI6, and of the long, snowy road from Moscow to Minsk. "I never stayed any length of time." She finished skimming the file. SHIELD wanted to know if a small medical technology firm was an AIM front or only selling them parts. It was a small job. 'Small potatoes,' Clint would say, and just the right size operation for a new handler and field agent to get used to one another.

"Do you have any local contacts there?" he asked.

That was another matter entirely. Her entire life and livelihood had been built on cultivating local contacts everywhere she went. The right contacts for the right personae, favors for favors. But it had been years and the world had already changed drastically since only 1990. "I don't think so, not anymore," she said, "but I'll check and make sure. I take it I'm going undercover?"

"Both of us. We'll be from RusPin's corporate office in Moscow, on site to conduct a surprise inspection. You can manage an audit of their accounting software?"

"In my sleep."

He smiled, satisfied. "Excellent. We'll leave Thursday."

"Time frame?" she asked.

"Depends on them. If they get nervous, we can stay a while and see what shakes out. SHIELD will be routing all their communications, so we'll be able to control our cover as long as necessary."

Two weeks later she and Coulson were holed up in a cold ground floor storeroom, hiding from a fifty-person cadre of yellow-suited AIM goons who had interrupted their inspection with one of their own: the RusPin lab supposedly dedicated to making microfilament smart-stents had been secretly and forcibly repurposed into an AIM nanite factory. There had already been gunfire. Coulson had already called in a strike team, but it would be a while before Natasha and Coulson could safely sneak out to their extraction point. In the meantime, all they could do was listen to the AIM terrorists scare the crap out of the scientists upstairs.

A quarter hour passed of insane ranting, shouts of protest, and what she very much hoped were warning shots for dramatic effect. AIM was big on dramatic effect; she considered it a waste of perfectly good ammunition, but it did mean fewer bullets being fired at her. "You okay?" Coulson asked.

"Fine," Natasha said through gritted teeth.

They had figured out the first day that something was going on that had not been approved by RusPin upper management, but the official books were clean. Natasha kept digging, though, resorting even to a room by room audit of their employees and resources. The production side was making medical equipment but not enough medical equipment. The R&D side was putting in far too many hours for their weekly reports. It was the classic ruse, and she and Coulson had nearly been caught in the middle of it.

"You don't look okay." He coughed. "No offense. You just seem..."

"Pissed off?" she suggested. 

He shrugged. 

"I've developed a severe dislike toward nanotechnology. If there were a chance in hell I could take them out now without getting either of us killed, I would've already done it." She poked around the storage room, which held nothing but standard office and lab supplies. "Why didn't we bring explosives? That would solve at least two of our problems."

Coulson's grunt of amusement was brief but real. He didn't say anything, though. He was staring narrow-eyed at the locked door to the corridor as if...as if it were a computer screen.

She snorted. "You're trying to remember the nanite story from my file."

"Yes, yes I am," he said blandly. "It is rather a large file, you know. Or you could just tell me." 

"You could tell me what you already know," she countered. "It is my life, after all. I could confirm or deny."

His laugh held a note of pleasure under the resignation. "We've both been in this business for a long time."

She nodded. "True." Coulson's adult life was a long time.

"There were fairly complete statements from the um, from the others affected," he said.

"Yes, I imagine so." SHIELD's unexpurgated report on Ivan and the nanite issue was above her clearance level, since it had involved a number of highly illegal personal favors to her from Fury. But there would be statements from Clint, first and most directly. Probably Bobbi. Stark, probably through someone he didn't know worked for SHIELD. Hercules, of course. Possibly Alexei if they'd tracked Natasha's travels that far. Probably not Matt.

"Please stop me if this is too personal. I appreciate that it wasn't a SHIELD mission, per se. I don't want to make you uncomfortable." The look on his face was as gentle as she'd ever seen it.

"Ask," she said.

He pushed off the stack of printer paper he'd been sitting on, paced a few steps, and listened at the door a few moments before finally speaking. "I don't understand what Bezukhov expected of you. Nothing he did toward the end made any sense!" He sounded utterly baffled, or like he wanted to be, anyway, and Natasha couldn't help but laugh.

"Oh, Coulson."

"He was—forgive me," he said, lowering his voice. "He was essentially your father, wasn't he? And yet he wanted you to..."

She held Coulson's gaze for a moment, and then tilted her head in assent. "Mother, father, and uncle, all rolled into one, from the beginning. Until he went crazy and infected me with killer nanites. To punish me for being the child he raised instead of the wife he wanted." The words fell to the floor between them. Coulson looked like he wished he could regret asking, but they were both too much themselves for that to be an option.

Softly, he said, "The legend says you were a baby tossed out of a burning building."

"Did Fury tell you that?" she asked, noting that he hadn't mentioned the city's name. The brief flash in his eyes said no, Fury had not been his source at all. "Clint told you that," she said with a smile and watched Coulson's face relax. Clint adored Coulson and had for years. Clint was occasionally a terrible judge of character, and also enough of a puppy that anyone with half a brain could take advantage of his person-who-feeds-me-is-a-friend programming. But Coulson hadn't, as far as she could tell, and Clint told her everything.

"Is it true?" Coulson asked.

She sighed. Enough people already knew this tale, and the only people who could attach a year to it were long dead; confirming it to Coulson couldn't hurt anyone anymore. "Possibly. It's what Ivan always told me."

"Was he a good father?" Coulson asked.

She narrowed her eyes. "Does SHIELD honestly care whether he was a good father?"

Coulson shook his head. "Not even a little. This is just me."

His eyes said he was telling the truth. The shape of his lips said he wanted her to believe him. The pulse in his neck didn't jump until he'd watched her noting each detail of his face for at least three seconds. No overwhelming lust. No disrespect. No sense of her as a mere puzzle to solve and discard like a newspaper crossword.

"I believe you. Also, I have no idea. He was what I had, and in the circumstances there wasn't much to compare him to. He didn't abuse me, though, if that's what you were asking." She was still baffled by the course of Ivan's insanity, and she let some of that show on her face. "For years he only tried to protect me. That's why the end was so bizarre."

This time Coulson's smile was a little sad, a little pleased, and somewhat surprised. "Thank you."

She listened to the noises above for a few seconds. The AIM leader had gone into full-on university lecture mode. To her surprise, Coulson didn't ask her anything else, even though SHIELD had a lengthy list of unanswered questions concerning her late Uncle Ivan.

She leaned back against an industrial-sized crate of nitrile gloves. "Would you tell me where you came from?" she asked. It was almost a whim and not quite a dare. 

She absolutely did not expect Coulson to say, "I'd be happy to," and to launch into a description of a childhood and youth spent in latter twentieth century New England. His face lit up, and he talked about his family instead of around them—as so many SHIELD agents did, as if they'd been decanted instead of born—and quite a lot of what he told her was not in his file at all, at least not the file she had clearance for. 

She knew an olive branch when she saw one, and it was just possible that Clint was right about him, after all. She could imagine Clint declaring that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and then reminding her that there were actual reasons why she and Coulson were the two people he wanted at his back in a fight. Then their phones beeped in unison: the Cavalry's two-minute warning. They grabbed their coats, confirmed their exit route, and ran.

  
  
  
  


8.

It hadn't been a mission. She'd really thought it would happen on a mission—that Yasha would just show up and either help or hinder them, and they'd have to figure out decades of drama in the midst of fighting killer robots or something. That was how Natasha's life tended to work these days, so it was a surprise when it didn't happen like that at all.

She and Steve had just left a meeting with Maria—first debriefing their last assignment, then yet more figuring out how things were going to work in a post-SHIELD world (hint: more good guys, less HYDRA)—and had stopped for a late lunch at a tiny midtown cafe with good pizza and better pasta. It was just Natasha and Steve, as it had been a lot lately. Sam was still spending at least half his time in DC. Stark was focused on finding some kind of halfway sane power balance with Maria. Clint was splitting time with Phil while Phil was partway off the grid, and Fury was entirely off the grid, except for whatever he was funneling through Phil. In other words, the Avengers, such as they were, were a mess, and SHIELD, as it existed under the radar, was worse. Natasha didn't mind spending more time with Steve, though. The two of them worked well together and she enjoyed his company.

The waitstaff brought salads and mouthwatering garlic bread, and the moment her mouth was full, Yasha was standing there, hands open, nervous, saying, "Can I?" and indicating an empty chair.

Nothing about him said "Winter Soldier". His hair was short again. He'd shaved in the last two days. His leather jacket looked new and the glove well cared for. He was wearing eyeliner, but he'd lost the feral look it was meant to distract from. Besides, it looked good on him, and when they'd been undercover together, he'd always enjoyed being pretty. 

Steve had managed to push the chair out for him with his boot and stutter, "Yes. God, yes. Buck—" before another server swooped in with a menu and glass of water. Yasha ordered without looking at it, meaning he'd been surveilling them at least long enough to look up the cafe’s menu on his phone.

When it was just the three of them again, Natasha took a breath. "You really want to have this conversation in public?" He was between them, to her right and Steve's left, and she had no illusions where that left her if things went bad. It was guns or nothing, and...and he was smiling at her wryly and shrugging.

"I guess that's up to you, Natalia, but..." He licked his lips. A little chapped, full, as beautiful as he'd ever been. Maybe even more, given the new depth in his eyes. "Let me say a couple of things, okay? I have my memories back. All of them."

"Bucky—" Steve said, but Natasha kicked him in the shin and he stopped. He'd have his turn.

She bit back the name on the tip of her tongue. "What are you calling yourself these days?"

His eyebrows went up. Not the question he was expecting, apparently. "Um. James will do."

She nodded. "James, then." She glanced around them, at the half-full restaurant. They'd missed the lunch rush, at least, so there were fewer potential casualties. She could see Steve trying to figure out how to say he wasn't going to let anyone die here today without panicking the eavesdroppers who'd realized Captain America was in the room. She made her shoulders relax a fraction and smiled as if greeting an old friend. "How've you been?"

James shrugged and helped himself to the garlic bread. "Better. Really a lot better." In an undertone, he said, "Back in control. Finally."

Across from her, Steve looked half on the verge of tears and half like he wanted to haul James into his lap, and never mind the spectators. "Good. I'm really, really glad to hear that," said Steve fervently. "I want to hear everything—and I mean everything—but, yeah, maybe not here."

James' eyes were shining a little as he nodded, and...and this had to be too good to be true, Natasha thought, watching him, or that's what every scrap of training and experience were shouting at her. His face, his voice, even his hands seemed sincere, but she couldn't take this at face value, not least because Steve's feelings were written all over his face. 

She leveled her eyes at James and kept her voice low. "Tell me something only I would know." Across from her, Steve tensed, but she gave him the hand signal to wait for her all-clear, and he subsided.

"Okay." James buttered another piece of garlic bread, and appeared to give the matter some thought. He still looked a little worried, and hopeful, and now there was definitely a bittersweet note in his expression. He spoke softly, "You ironed my uniform the morning after I first told you my name. We had a honeymoon in Yalta. Undercover," he added, not taking his eyes off hers. "You broke up with me in the snow when they married you off to Alexei, and not one of them asked you what you wanted."

She swallowed hard. All true. "Yasha," she whispered. Then louder, "James." 

He took her hand and squeezed. It was his metal one, but he was gentle and the glove was thick. "I have it all back. Some of it's faded with time, but everything I was awake for is there."

That was good, fantastic, even, but it wasn't the most important part. "What about the mental programming?" she whispered.

He shook his head. "It was never permanent, and the directives got easier to break as time passed. That's why they couldn't send me out for long. Even with a total mind-wipe—"

"Wait, what?" Steve demanded, his voice a little too loud.

"Not an issue anymore," James said. "Nobody's telling me what to do but me now. I swear on my mother's grave—and I know where that is now, by the way. I went and found it." He shared a speaking glance with Steve and then returned his attention to her. He didn't say the words, "Look at the HYDRA body count if you don't believe me," but she read them on his face and nodded. He did add, "You've got access to telepaths, right?"

She shrugged. She did; they'd been instrumental in sorting out her own lost memories, but she needed to talk to Maria before they put that option on the table. For now, simple logic was his best ally. "HYDRA presumably implanted an order to keep you from attacking them?"

"Several of them, yeah. I realized there was a list of orders two or three days after you exposed HYDRA. I didn't need to obey any of them anymore, and I didn't." His gaze traveled down to her hands and back up to her face. He was still holding her hand. "Natalia—" He squeezed her fingers and let go. "I don't know how to convince you. You have every reason not to believe me."

She hummed in agreement, but her relief was growing the more she thought about it. The facts checked against what she remembered: by their last missions together, their commanders were pulling Yasha in after no more than a week in the field, mission accomplished or not, because his mental conditioning needed constant reiteration. The difficulty of controlling him as an asset might have been behind his transfer from Department X to HYDRA. Or maybe HYDRA had simply purchased him, stasis unit and all.

"I've missed you," James said. "Both of you." He smiled at Steve, then, with all the warmth and old affection he'd been aiming at her, and his face said he meant it. His lips said he wanted to kiss them both. The lines around his eyes spoke of resignation to what they wanted. The stubbornness in his jaw said this was his shot and he was damned well taking it, for better or worse. Natasha was acutely aware of her increasing desire to climb into his lap and kiss the breath out of him. Another part of her mind was already planning her call to Stark. They had to figure out the logistics of keeping him safe.

But then the server was back with three huge steaming plates, and for a while they only devoured their food like the superlative former lab rats they each were. But she caught Steve making eyes at James, and she saw the moment Steve's left hand disappeared under the table and James froze, then forcibly relaxed. A squeeze to his knee, she guessed, or higher. Maybe the white tablecloth was long enough to keep it from showing up on YouTube later. On the other hand, the shape of Steve's mouth and the light in his eyes said he couldn't have cared less if it did.

When lunch was mostly demolished, James said, "So, I'm not really sure how to begin, but—"

Steve opened his mouth, glanced sideways at the other tables, met her eyes for a quick status check, silently acknowledged her negative, and took a long drink of water instead. Holding his tongue was obviously driving him crazy, but they both knew what he'd do once the brakes were off.

"How long have you been following us?" she asked. She'd caught James at a distance several times, but as long as he wasn't wreaking havoc, she'd decided to watch and see what happened.

"Most recently? The last week," he said. "That was nice work in Atlanta, by the way."

She nodded. "Thanks. I've seen you off and on since Steve and Sam came home." They'd spent months in pursuit of James, with Steve getting just close enough for them to exchange a few words, sometimes, as if luring a wild animal with food. Neither she nor Sam had liked that Steve was using himself as bait, but, well, his heart was on his sleeve and it wasn't as if she could blame him.

A lot of people had died along the route, but every one of them had been HYDRA. She and Maria had coordinated cleanup for most of it, and she'd helped Steve track Winter Soldier sightings where James had been kind enough to let himself be seen. But in the end, six months back, he'd joined Steve on a park bench and said, "Go home, okay? Go play superhero and let me get my head together." And Steve had held his hands, both of them, Sam told her, and told him he still loved him. They'd sat like that for a while, and then James said, "I'll find you, don't worry," and vanished.

Sam had been a rock. She sort of wished he were here now. 

"Natalia, I—" James broke off, eyes slipping sideways to check the other patrons, then back to her. Full of feeling. Free of the jagged, frenzied overwhelm from when the Triskelion came down, but still worried. "I had a lot of shit to figure out. To put back together."

Their last mission together that she remembered had been in the late Sixties. She'd heard of him appearing now and then after that, but only as a solo operative. She could never learn whether they'd been separated on purpose, or if he'd simply been reassigned. They'd tried to make her forget him, but it never took.

Steve said, "I think it's safe to say that's going to be true for us, too." He looked between them and lifted an eyebrow at her. "I don't know much about what you two had before, except that what you told SHIELD didn't even scratch the surface."

Natasha smiled frostily. "It was none of their business."

Steve nodded. "I get that, but—" James lay a hand over Steve's, on top of the table, to silence him and Steve went quiet. His lips parted, on the verge of saying god only knew what, and she absolutely was not doing this in public and neither should they. 

She scrawled an address on a paper napkin and passed it to Steve. "Meet me here in an hour." She glanced out the front windows and amended, "An hour and a half, if traffic's bad. Wear civvies," she added, because Steve's boots and pants looked military and would draw the eye where they were going. Then she leaned in and kissed James deeply, remembering her Yasha of decades ago, and let it be as wonderful as she wanted.

He hummed into the kiss and whispered, "Yes, ma'am," as she pulled away. "We'll be there."

She gave the hand signal for "all clear, proceed at will" to Steve and left. She walked east and south for a while and eventually settled in the small neighborhood park near her apartment. It was only striking three, so it was still more toddlers and bored elderly people than rambunctious older kids. The familiar old lady who fed the birds had already gone home for the day. Natasha claimed a bench with good sight-lines and watched the cold autumn wind play on the tiny, duckless duck pond. It smelled good, like distant wood fires and fallen leaves. 

She was the only one of them who had been awake since the beginning. Not frozen in ice or put in a stasis chamber. She was technically eighty-seven years old now, thanks to Department X and Professor Kudrina's chemical cocktails. There wasn't a lot Natasha hadn't done in her life, and the prospect of sharing a lover didn't frighten her. She'd been so well programmed to play the femme fatale that having multiple partners actually seemed to her a perfectly natural order of things, which was probably why playing the good Soviet housewife for Alexei back in the late Fifties had been so strange. Monogamy had been boring, yes, but more importantly, it had contradicted everything she'd been taught from age thirteen through her mid-twenties. She had coped, of course, but there were reasons she'd slept her way through every industrial tycoon in Europe over the next decade. Reasons beyond basic espionage.

She felt sure Steve and Yasha were rutting against one another at that very moment, maybe in a back alley, hopefully not in the men's room; she liked the cannelloni at that place and wanted to go back without having to glare down any waitstaff whispers. But the two of them had a lot to resolve. Not only lust, but betrayal and grief and a desperate, needful love that at times she'd found physically painful to watch.

Which kind of begged the question what the hell she was doing. Was it really that she accepted Steve's prior claim? She didn't want to be a secondary partner, as they called it these days. She had far too many memories of Yasha being her husband, on assignment after assignment, even though they'd never had an actual wedding and they were never allowed to keep the rings afterward. Even though their superiors had attempted to scrape out those memories every time. 

She wanted him back.

She stood up, startled. That was a thought she had not had in decades. It was uncomfortable, almost a physical itch under her skin. She started moving, as if a change of scenery would soothe her. She wanted her Yasha as much as Steve wanted his Bucky. And together, apparently, they had a chance at James—whoever this James turned out to be.

Fifteen minutes later, she was wearing a sweater, a long skirt, boots, and a wool hat. It was a terribly Russian outfit by her standards, and it was also advertising her nostalgia like a billboard. She put a change of clothes and some groceries into her market bag, and hurried underground to catch a train. Thirty minutes to the safe house was doable, barely, MTA willing. She texted Steve when she was ten minutes away, and he replied that she would just beat them. Then she texted JARVIS to request a two-hour block of everyone's time the next day, non-emergency priority one. 

Being with Yasha had been sheer joy amid all the horror and intrigue; he'd been her solace against the nightmare that was their lives then. In the time since, she'd learned how to be that for herself, but—this feeling, the smell of him, the shape of his mouth against hers—this was her whole body yearning toward Yasha in exactly the same way that Steve reached toward Bucky, like a flower following the sun.

When they arrived, Steve was wearing khakis, a brown leather jacket, and a pair of worn Chucks from a locker he kept near Grand Central. James took in her outfit as she closed the door of the apartment, cracked an old, familiar smile at her, and then scanned the room. 

"Neutral ground," she offered, "and fairly new," meaning post-SHIELD. It was minimally furnished with a small couch and one chair, a TV on the wall, a couple of end tables. The kitchen stretched along one side of the living room. The bedroom was mostly bed, with shelves and cabinets mounted high on the walls, because New York was ridiculous. The bathroom was tiny but sufficient. She'd brought snacks and there were infinite takeout possibilities within a few blocks.

Then James was in her arms, kissing her hello, embracing her, and he was as hard as she was already wet, and, fuck, Steve. Steve was standing two steps back, staring avidly, and she—she had absolutely no idea which way to play this. Part of her brain was saying, "Seduction, threesome, take them both." Another argued that Steve had been like a baby brother to her the last two years and they absolutely needed to talk this out. Another just wanted Yasha's cock inside her now-now-now, and fuck the complications, talk later! And that part was winning, actually. She was grinding against his thigh. There was no excuse.

"Steve," Yasha gasped out, half a question. 

"It's okay," Steve said.

Yasha kissed her again. "How weird would it be for you if he watched us?" he asked. "You two aren't involved." He said it as a fact, which it was. Anyone could see her body language with Steve read as friends and colleagues, not lovers. 

Still. She and Steve had watched each other do any number of things in the field and shared enough beds, as well. They'd had enough missions together that she knew him inside out, and neither she nor James needed him to be noble here. "Rogers," she said. Her arms were still around James' neck. She could probably make herself let go if she had to.

He moved so he was at their elbows. "Yeah?" he said softly. 

She pressed harder against Yasha's leg and shivered. "How long after I left did you take him someplace private?"

Steve went pink and answered in a low voice, "About four and a half minutes. We had to pay the check."

She kissed Yasha again. James. Him. "And if I had stayed?"

"Less, maybe." Steve laughed. "You don't know how you look at him."

"Sure I do." Steve's pupils were blown wide. He was practically thrumming in place, and yet not actually touching either of them. She smiled. "Same way you do." 

James made a helpless noise and rocked into her. "Steve, Christ."

Steve said, "Take the bed. We can talk after," which won a laugh from her and a curse from James.

"Thank you, but not necessary. I think maybe we've covered enough of the basics for now. What do you think?" She addressed the last bit to them both.

"Are you sure?" Steve asked. The color was high in his cheeks, and he looked like he was physically restraining himself from wrapping bodily around James. 

"We'll make room," she said and gave him the "your call" hand signal for good measure.

James took her mouth in a crushing kiss, and then lifted her in his arms, crossed to the bedroom, and lay her gently on the bed. Steve followed close behind, trailing clothes, and soon they were all naked, James—Yasha—pushing into her and Steve watching from a careful twelve inches of mattress away.

The first orgasms hit quick and did almost nothing to blunt the edge of their desire. She flipped him and kept going, and next to them Steve was jerking himself hard, staring as much at her as at—at James, not Yasha. James. It was a surprise. She was used to Steve's businesslike visual checks for injury, for flaws in her disguises, to confirm a plan before they dove in. Lust for her was new.

"It's okay with me if you kiss him," she said, and it surprised her not a bit that Steve came with a ragged moan as soon as James' tongue was in his mouth. James didn't miss a beat, though, as she rode him. She tugged at his nipples, and he broke the kiss with Steve to curl up into her, taking her mouth as Steve had just taken his, squeezing her nipples back, and in precisely the old pressure-release rhythm she'd used to love. "Oh, Yasha," she cried out as she came again, as he moved her hips, controlling the slide up into her, and this time the orgasm was what she needed it to be. The kind that shattered. The kind that left them in a sweaty heap of oversensitized nerves, shuddering with aftershocks and skating the edge of sleep.

"Natashenka," he said and curled up behind her. 

"My love," she answered in Russian, and felt the bed shift in a way that meant Steve had fitted himself in as the biggest spoon. Yasha—James—kissed her neck, and she drifted off.

It was only minutes, but when she awoke, Steve was lying on his back next to her and James was covering his body with kisses. "Sorry, sorry," Steve said when he saw she was alert and watching.

"It's okay," she said. It was a beautiful sight, too. Steve spread out all golden and perfect. James—this new-old love of her life—kissing every bit of Steve's skin he could reach, as if that could slake a thirst born of decades apart. "He needs you."

"Both of us," Steve said and ended on a gasp as James moved from Steve's thigh and sucked his right testicle into his mouth. "Oh, Bucky, god."

She laughed. "And yes, he is listening, isn't he?"

James winked at her. Then he started applying himself to swallowing Steve's cock. Steve was shaking, petting James' hair, and doing a pretty good job of not thrusting as James slowly wrung another orgasm out of him.

If Steve had been a mark, she and James would—no. She cut that train of thought off decisively. They'd only done that once, that she remembered, and the job had been horrible. She had been far too in love with Yasha then to cope with having a target in their bed.

Steve was. Steve was her partner and teammate. And also her friend.

Afterward, James moved up to sit between them and stroked Steve's still-quivering chest with his metal hand. His control was perfect. She said, "Neural network?"

His smile was fast and startlingly young. "I can feel everything. Texture, heat, pressure." He touched one of Steve's nipples and stroked it to a nub. "It's light years beyond the old tin can."

"So if I do this," Steve said, and sucked the tip of James' metal index finger.

James hummed contentedly. "It isn't quite the same sensation as skin, but it's still good."

"Do you need a glove to keep lube out?" she asked, thinking about supplies.

He laughed. "Yeah, given the option. Decontamination's kind of a bitch." Then he leaned in to kiss her while still cupping Steve's face. "You two have never even kissed, as far as I know."

Steve coughed, or maybe it was a strangled laugh. Natasha said, "Only on assignment, and not often, no."

James nodded. "So..." His cheeks were pink and he kept looking down at his hands. 

She sat up, knee-to-knee with him, even as Steve shifted his sprawl closer. "We're listening, Buck."

James smiled, looking up through his lashes. "We're here, so you probably guessed this, but I suppose I need to say it outright." He made a face and went on, "I mean, I waited a week for a good opportunity, and then today you were together, and in public, and somewhere without bugs or tails, and you had each other as backup. So, I'm just going to put it all on the table here." He took a deep breath. "Thing is, choosing one of you over the other would be like cutting out my own heart. I can't do it. I just—I can't. We have years together. We have history other people can't even dream of, and I love you. Both of you."

She looked at him sidelong. "That's what you've been doing out there for the last six months?"

James suddenly found the beige thermal curtains terribly interesting. "I...I had some people to kill, too."

She laughed, delighted despite herself, and the expression on Steve's face as he sat up and wrapped James into a rocking hug—equal parts disapproval and fondness—only fed her mirth.

"You researched polyamory," she said, smiling.

He let go of Steve and glared at her for a few seconds. Then his face cleared. "I guess you did, too, then."

"You forget I had classes in being someone's mistress," she answered, smirking. "But also, yes. I keep up on what people are doing with relationship dynamics. You never know when it might be part of the job."

"Wait," Steve said, straightening. "Classes?"

She patted his arm, squeezed, blinked as she realized what she was doing, and let go. She didn't give him the dismissive platitude that had been on the tip of her tongue. 

"Oh shit." James kissed the point of her shoulder. "He doesn't know any of it?" He let out a gust of breath. "Fuck, I'm sorry. Both of you." 

Silence stretched. It was just like Yasha to apologize for something that was her own fault. It was stunning that she'd allowed herself to be so careless, and that she apparently felt safe enough with them both to drop a spontaneous truth-bomb, however vague.

Steve was staring at her hard. "I know you were in an assassin school, and I think I was dimly aware that they must have taught you seduction. I don't suppose anyone is born knowing how to do that." It looked like he was searching his memory, and also like he was trying not to say the wrong thing. 

She took a moment, considering damage control. "My point was they taught us how to arrange things to preserve the wife's dignity in the face of the husband's other interests. It was polyamory in some cases, although most of the time it was just cheating."

Steve nodded. "And I know that if you two were together way back when, then you're a hell of a lot older than I thought." The way he said it was more observation than accusation, and yet.

"Steve," she began. "There was no sense in exposing you to unnecessary risk." Most of her past had been above his clearance, and there had never been any reason to talk about it, anyway. It wasn't as if she were prone to reminiscing about the bad old days. "Sometimes being partners has meant not dumping stuff on you that has no bearing on our present lives."

"Okay." Steve pursed his lips. "Of course, my Army days are in the public record, while your espionage days aren't. You've seen everything SHIELD had on me."

"Yes," she agreed.

"And then there's the matter of 'our present lives'," he said, jerking his chin toward James. "Pretty sure some of those secrets have bearing."

A long, uncomfortable moment passed as she considered and discarded arguments, excuses, distractions, and how much of what he wanted to know he had any right to hear. Finally, she said, "Some of them." At his scowl, she continued, "Look, this is new for me, too, Steve. Silence has been the rule of my life. Even when I was freelancing, I was playing Russian state security off the CIA and HYDRA off of SHIELD." She gestured, encompassing all three of them. "James never knew everything about me, and I never knew everything about him. You can't take it personally."

James kissed them both, then, warm and wet, and stood up. "I'm ordering dinner. This is going to take a while, and if I'm feeling peckish, Steve'll be starving before we know it."

She called after him, "There's sandwich stuff in the fridge," and tried not to be distracted by how James' kiss had tasted entirely of Steve's come.

When she looked back, Steve was staring at her. "I feel really naked all of a sudden," he said.

It was mutual. She smiled up at him a little sadly. "We don't have to do this. We can share him without ever having to be naked together again."

"What, like sister wives?" he asked half-ironically.

"I don't watch that show. Or did you mean the ones that turned out to be lesbians and ditched their husband?"

"That was an interesting story," he said, "but I'm not ditching him and I'm not asking you to, either. We got him back, what, not even four hours ago." He met her gaze, blushed, and added, "Yes, fine, it is killing me to have him out of my sight, even though I can hear him on the phone."

She laughed. "Me too."

A long moment passed and neither of them moved or reached for bedding to cover their bare skin, and she realized how little she wanted, or needed, to hide from him.

"How weird would it be for us to get involved like this?" His voice was low, serious, like he was tallying risks against benefits amid too many unknowns.

"We're a good team," she offered. "We read each other well. I like you. I couldn't consider this at all if we didn't have that, but..." she trailed off, and then went with brutal honesty. "I would fight you for him, and that would destroy our friendship and our professional relationship. The repercussions of that are unacceptable."

Steve swallowed audibly. "He said he can't choose."

"And I won't make him. We can share." She watched his face soften as he considered it. Them. "I can see what he loves about you, Steve."

He nodded. "Me, too. About you, I mean. I just...trust is the issue. My issue." He bobbed his head a little shyly. His focus drifted to her breasts. She could hear James in the bathroom now and wondered if there were toothbrushes. It had been Clint's turn to restock last time, she thought, but who knew if he'd done it. Steve reached out and took her hand. "You're right, we're already partners. We have that and we're good at it, and now we know what each other looks like head over heels in love. And also, um, mid-orgasm."

"It's intimate." She squeezed his fingers. He didn't let go.

He whispered, "I really need to know, Nat. I won't tell anyone if that's how you want it, but this thing where you know everything about me and I only have the last three years of working with you..." he trailed off, shaking his head.

She shut her eyes, just in time for James to come back and complete their triangle. "Forty minutes or so," he murmured. He kissed the corner of Steve's mouth, then Natasha's. He'd found toothpaste, anyway.

"Food, then vodka," she answered. Vodka was Maria's vice of choice; Natasha preferred coffee, but for this, she wanted vodka's cold burn, even if its effect on her was only illusion.

"Freezer?" he asked.

She made a face. "Could you check?" 

He kissed her and was back again in fifteen seconds. "Two bottles full, an inch left in a third."

She calculated. If she told them everything, it might take all of it, plus the entire weekend, and at the end she'd be such an emotional wreck that she might need a month alone in the mountains to feel like herself again. There was absolutely no sense in torturing herself to assuage Steve's curiosity. But he had a point. 

James' voice broke into her thoughts. He was stroking Steve's shoulder, then gripping it firmly with his right hand. "You get what 'spy school' means, right?" She heard the gentle rebuke in his voice but Steve was shaking his head.

"She and I have been working as a team for three years, Bucky." Steve intertwined their fingers and leaned into him. To Natasha he said, "You really never thought to mention we had the same ex?"

James poked him. "You have the same guy, pal. Present tense."

"Thank you," she said, and leaned in to kiss James. "I approve of present tense."

"If you want, I can tell him the parts I was there for," James offered. "You don't have to tell your whole life story." He kissed the side of her head. "I'm sorry this is so complicated. I didn't know he wasn't briefed." Then he squeezed Steve's hand and repeated the apology and the kisses.

She watched and was surprised that it felt okay. Even as Steve was saying, "I don't even know where I thought you came from, Nat. You know, I tried to make it fit with Yeltsin, I think his name was? If you'd been a kid when I thought? But that didn't work and it sure as hell doesn't fit with what you've told me today."

"You didn't have clearance." She enunciated it carefully, slowly. They both knew damned well what that meant, hard as it was to accept sometimes. 

His nod was grudging, and she would bet he was physically biting his tongue, waiting for what she would say next. 

She clasped his free hand and held on. It was like taking a flying leap without a flight rig, but right now he wasn't Captain America or Agent Rogers. Right now he was the other love of Yasha's life, and they'd pretty much just agreed they were embarking on this new thing together, the three of them. He had no idea who she really was. She could even the scales a little. She said, "SHIELD may be gone as an official agency, but this is still classified and will remain classified. Understood?" She waited for both of them to agree, and then added, "I'll tell you about my life, and if James wants to help fill in the gaps, that's his choice. No pressure either way." She tapped the back of James' metal hand twice. Long ago that had meant something like, "Do it my way or I will end you." He caught her fingers and squeezed an affirmative.

Steve watched all of that without saying anything. 

She said, "I won't do this all at once. That would make it an interrogation, and we're not doing that."

"Definitely not doing that," James agreed, and hugged her.

Steve said, "Partners," as if that meant everything, and between them, she felt a little better. Steve hated seeing her get hurt, no matter how fast she healed. James...had probably done some unspeakable things to a number of people who had tried to kill her, she thought. She'd have to ask him for confirmation. Some other day.

She again resisted the urge to put some clothes on and started talking. "Once upon a time, in Stalingrad, in 1928, the army was sent in to deal with political unrest. A building was on fire, and a woman inside called to some soldiers and threw a baby down to them. That was me. Then the roof collapsed and killed everyone inside, and all they knew was my name."

She glossed over being a child among soldiers, skipped the famine, skipped Stalin's purges, said, "If you want to talk about Soviet history with me, I'll give you some books first, okay?" Steve nodded, and she went on summarizing. It was too big to explain. Too traumatic. Talking about Taras Romanov's school was easier, and training with Logan, and not killing Logan after he'd killed Taras. 

And, of course, Steve had known Logan in the war and might put this part together on his own if she didn't rip off the band-aid herself. "Do you remember your first trip to Madripoor?" she asked.

His head went up, eyes wide. "Which one?"

"Early 1942," she said.

He continued to stare. "That was you."

"That was me," she said.

"Yeah, I have no idea what either of you are talking about," James put in. "Just so you know."

Steve let out a long breath. "It was right after the serum—a couple of weeks, maybe. They were still trying to convince me to play lab-rat for them, so they put me on a plane to the Far East to meet some people. I guess they were scientists, but I didn't speak the language and the Army translator was a jerk. I ended up in Madripoor on a layover before they sent me to London, and there was Baron Strucker, Logan, and—oh, god, that was your Ivan."

"And me." She turned to James. "You remember the Hand, right?" He nodded. "The Red Room sent me to infiltrate the Hand group in Madripoor and kill the Jonin. I didn't know it at the time, but Strucker was there to build a Nazi-HYDRA alliance. I didn't even know it was Strucker who kidnapped me for them. He was just a big, bald Nazi."

"Infiltration by kidnapping?" James asked doubtfully.

"Department X," she said meaningfully, and they shared a knowing look.

Steve said, "The Jonin wanted you to kill me and Ivan with that sword. Then Logan burst in and—"

"And took the kill from me," she finished. "We had words about that."

Steve looked horrified. "You—"

"He thought he was protecting my innocence, the idiot." She shook her head. "I only wish he'd killed Strucker, too. I wish they'd told me who Strucker was. It might have cut years off the war. Or stopped HYDRA from forming." 

"Or me," Steve replied, eyes growing wide with dawning guilt. "If I'd known, I could've—" 

"Steve, you were weeks out of boot camp." She jabbed him in the knee for emphasis. "You weren't even with the USO yet."

He sagged. "Okay, fair point." Then he tilted his head sideways in a way that meant he was thinking hard, making connections. "You were never going to tell me we'd met before?"

"My real age had Level Ten clearance for very good reasons, Steve."

"Which is why you neglected to post that file on the internet."

"Damned right," she answered. 

Steve's eyes were taking that at face value but his mouth was still unhappy. "I just wish I'd known."

She brushed his knee with a thumb. "I didn't even know who you were until decades later when I finally put the pieces together."

"Really?" Steve laughed. For some reason that seemed to ease his mind.

"I was a kid." She shrugged and didn't tell him that even then, she hadn't been sure until just now. There had been other men in the Captain America suit, after all. "They told me not to worry about the exfil, so I didn't," she said, "because I did what they ordered. Then Logan..." She made a "kaboom" gesture with both hands. Logan had screwed everything up completely, but thanks to Seraph she'd made it back to the Red Room, mission accomplished despite it all.

James took the food delivery, towel wrapped around his waist, and they took a break to eat. Then vodka, poured into a water glass, cold and smooth and almost flavorless but for its fire. She gave it a few minutes, remembering a time long ago when it had still worked on her, and drank more even as she felt her metabolism chasing it out of her system. Then she told them about Professor Pchelintsov and the dentist's chair, the buckles, the ballet, the implanted and removed memories, her non-parents. Professor Kudrina and the biochemical modifications. The courses in unarmed combat, weapons, climbing, languages, savoir faire, seduction, disguise, and so forth, interrupted, then, by the Great Patriotic War.

"There were lots of women soldiers," she said, drinking now because she'd been talking for hours and her throat was getting scratchy. "All of us from the Red Room were placed in different units, and ordinary women, too, eventually, all of us fighting the Germans. We had the same gear as the men. We—Russia—needed anyone who could hold a rifle. By 1944, my unit was deep in the West, on the front lines. I had a corporal's rank, then, and I wasn't—I didn't remember about the Red Room's existence at all at that point."

"I didn't know this," said James softly.

"I—" she broke off. "I want to say that I told you once, early on, but—" She shook her head. "I don't know." 

"Tasha." He kissed her and then kissed her again. "We all remember the War, and we agreed, no torture."

"Nat," Steve said in a low voice, and leaned in. He kissed her temple. Then he took her hands in both of his and kissed them, too. She was glad he hadn't aimed for her mouth. She could imagine kissing him now, and she didn't want their first real kiss to be in the midst of this.

She took a shaky breath and released it. Then she refilled her glass and took another long drink. "I'll finish this part," she said. She wanted James to know all of it, and the look in Steve's eyes said she could trust him with it, too. "Then we'll do whatever people do to remember how to laugh again." She tried to smile, but it didn't stick. 

Steve squeezed her fingers once more and released them.

"Almost no one knows this story, or ever did," she began, her voice low. "I was sixteen in '44. I fell in love with a boy in my unit who was a year older than me, and somehow I became pregnant. Kudrina's enhancements hadn't fully taken effect yet, evidently."

"Oh, god," said Steve. "On the battlefield?" 

"I didn't miscarry until late. We were in the Slovak Republic then, in the mountains, and the midwife helped me bury her. I named her Rose." She stopped and drank again, emptying the glass and putting it aside. "Nikolai had died in battle a few weeks before. He never knew." 

"Oh, love," James said, and pulled her into an embrace. 

She realized there were tears on her face when he began kissing them away. Steve produced a tissue for her, and she wiped her eyes, scrubbing tiredly. There was so much she was leaving out, so much she hadn't even known she remembered. "It was a lifetime ago," she said and took a deep breath. 

When she moved to extricate herself from James' lap, Steve said, "Can I?"

"Hmm?" Then she noticed the shine in his eyes, the crinkled press of his lips.

"Can I hold you, Nat?" he said, quieter. Then he swallowed. "You can say no. I know you know that, I just—"

He was sitting cross-legged, so she sat sideways on his lap and rested her face against his neck as he folded his arms around her and held on. He didn't say anything for a long time. Now and then, James reached over and brushed tears off Steve's face. Eventually, Steve wiped his eyes with the heel of a hand and kissed her forehead. "I'm so sorry." He kissed her hair. "I'm sorry for your loss, for Rose and Nikolai, and never mind that it was seventy years ago." He kissed her forehead again. "I'm sorry for making you relive this. I had no right."

She shrugged. "You had no idea what you were asking. I knew that."

"No," he agreed. "And I'm still sorry."

She hummed tiredly. "My life isn't in the history books, although parts of what I've done are. You know some of that feeling, too. Sometimes it's a good feeling. Sometimes it's beyond horrifying."

"Nat," he began. Then he shut his eyes and held her close again. At her hip she could feel his cock begin to stir and the sudden jerk of his abdominals as he willed the reaction away. 

She tilted her head back and stared until he met her eyes. "Sister wife," she said. 

It was a moment, but then Steve barked a laugh just as James squawked, "What?"

She said, "We're in this together." 

Steve nodded and kissed her hair again. "Partners," he said softly.

"What the hell did I miss?" James demanded.

"Yes," she said, ignoring James. "There are years' worth of stories, you know. I skipped the worst of them." 

Steve swallowed hard enough for her to hear it. "The War was full of atrocities. I'm...really good with not dragging any of us back there."

She sighed. "My _life_ has been full of atrocities, Steve. You have to decide what you can live without knowing."

Steve blinked. "Um."

"Partner," she said. "Or maybe you only want the fun stuff?"

"There was fun stuff?" James said. She swatted his side, laughing, and he grinned back. Then he leaned in and kissed her. Then he kissed Steve, whose thwarted erection surged up and smacked her hip. "There was a lot of fun stuff," James said. "For a while, we were a pair of very good spies doing very naughty things together and loving every moment."

Steve whimpered, and Natasha slid out from between them. In the bathroom, she stared at her reflection in the mirror until she stopped looking quite so fragile and started looking like herself again. She wouldn't fuck Steve tonight. They were both too shell-shocked by their own history for it to be anything other than fraught and guilt-ridden. She needed them on an even keel when they started this, because once it started, it wasn't going to stop.

When she climbed back into bed, they were rutting together, kissing hard and gasping. "Is there lube?" James breathed. "Please say there's lube."

She laughed, stood up and started hunting in the cabinets that surrounded the bed. She passed down the disposable gloves first, which James took gratefully. Then she held out three different brands of lube—that Clint had restocked these was never in doubt—and put two back. In a minute, James was writhing on Steve's fingers, under Steve's kiss, as he slowly, shakily opened to him.

Steve was trying to turn him over, but James wasn't having it. "Bucky, come on, turn around." 

James grasped Natasha's hand and pulled her so she was sitting at his shoulder. "I want to see you, Steve."

"You could lick Natasha." Steve leaned forward, his fingers deep in James' body, and kissed him. "If you're on your front, you can use your mouth on her while I fuck you."

James moaned, low and helpless, and finally, clumsily turned, aiming almost blindly for her. She chuckled, lying back. "I can work with this plan."

Steve blushed, then blushed deeper as she lifted her hips and he got his best view yet of her body. Then James' head was in his way, and Steve lined up his cock.

She was less content with the lines around James' eyes as Steve pushed in. "How long has it been since you had anything more than a finger in you?" she asked. She raised up on one hand, critically assessing the stretch of skin around Steve's erection. The girth was impressive but not impossible. Knowing the Winter Soldier serum would heal any tissue damage wasn't the point; this shouldn't have to hurt.

"More than a year, less than three," he mumbled against her clit. Then he got to work, matching Steve's rhythm with his mouth and hands, as expert with her body as he'd ever been, and it was easy for Natasha to focus on her own pleasure so James could get back to his. When she came, Steve's eyes were on her, avid. He was pressed tight against James' back, thrusting steadily, devouring her with his eyes. When she was done, Steve pushed James over, kissing and licking her taste from his mouth as they resettled themselves, James' at last getting what he'd wanted in the first place.

"Steve," he said, and it was a broken cry of need and urgency.

She didn't catch everything Steve was panting, but she made out, "Always, Buck. Since always," and then Steve's whole body was shuddering and James' cock was spurting through their laced fingers.

She noticed she wasn't breathing and remedied that. 

They were beautiful beyond description.

She already had too many fantasies, probably. Possibly. If such a thing were possible. She retrieved the box of tissues for them as they collapsed into a sweaty heap. Then she went into the other room and checked her phone. JARVIS had them scheduled for ten. Clint wanted details. Sam sent exclamation points. An unidentified caller offered, "congratulations, agent superspy". Maria would be there. Pepper confirmed, "Full family breakfast pending," which meant they'd even called Thor. Clint still wanted details, and also to say that Phil sent his sincerest...something. Clint hadn't provided a noun. 

She had a family. She'd known it for a while, but they didn't often come out of the woodwork all at once. Not without alien invasions involved, anyway.

She was leaning naked against a cold kitchen sink in a bolt-hole apartment near the edge of Brooklyn, smiling helplessly at her phone, when James and Steve emerged from the tiny bathroom. They were damp and flushed and at least marginally cleaner.

"Good news?" James asked. He kissed her deeply. Her taste in his mouth was fading, but he hadn't brushed his teeth this time. She wondered if Steve had stopped him.

"Could be." She glanced at Steve, and then looked into James' eyes. "You said you wanted us both, and now you've had us."

"I said I'm in love with you both, and I want to figure out how to make the three of us work," he answered immediately. "What are you asking?"

She reached for his hand. "This isn't some romantic fantasy and it isn't nostalgia. Have you even thought about all the weirdness that comes with our lives? The other Avengers? How much time we're away on missions? The media and civilians constantly taking pictures of us?" She started counting off on her fingers: "HYDRA, AIM, RAID, and whatever their latest crazy offshoot is. Killer robots. Monsters and mad scientists. Injuries. Someone will make you a target simply because one of us made eyes at you in public. Then, as soon as people figure out the legendary Bucky Barnes is alive—" She poked him in the chest. "And was the Winter Soldier. To say nothing of what the press will do when they realize you're in a relationship with us both." 

"I know." He glanced at Steve and back to her. The determined set to his jaw had returned. "Why do you think I spent six entire months thinking it through? I also had some thoughts about security and wherever the fuck we're going to live." He stopped. "Or that I'm going to live, I guess." She snorted and Steve wrapped him in a hug from behind. A moment later, James said, "I mean it, whatever we need to make this work, I'm in. Telepaths and all." He cupped her face and kissed her softly, repeating, "I'm in." Behind him, Steve kissed the side of his neck. "That goes for you, too," James said, and turned into Steve's embrace.

"I'm glad," said Steve. "Nat's right, though. There's going to be a lot to figure out."

"But you want to," James said, turning to aim the question at them both, equally. "I mean, now that the urge to get laid is down to a manageable level, we can—" He stopped and focused on Natasha. "Am I asking too much of you? I know it's been a hell of a long time. A lot's changed."

Her heart stuttered in her chest. "No. Not that much has changed." She pulled him into a fierce embrace. "I've always loved you. They never took that away from me completely—you were in my dreams even when I didn't know who you were. I only want to be sure you know what you're getting into." She looked up at Steve and smiled. "Considering who we are now."

Steve said, "Considering who we are, Buck, I'm pretty sure you're stuck with both of us from now on."

James shivered between them. "That sounds perfect." 

A little later, when James was shoulder-deep in the refrigerator comparing the available food options, she handed her phone to Steve, who skimmed the messages, eyes wide. "That was fast," he said.

She couldn't help her smile. She could feel something that could only be hope lighting her face, caution swept away by...happiness, maybe? Possibly? Steve was smiling back, though, because he felt it, too. Because this was theirs, together.

She hopped up onto the counter and watched James construct a monstrosity between slices of bread. At the same time, she was gauging the odds of James running away in the night if he knew what the morning would bring.

"Tomorrow," she decided, her mind racing with plans and contingencies. Her eyes flicked a cautionary glance to Steve, who nodded.

"That works for me," he said. Together they would get James through breakfast and whatever assurances Maria needed. After that, well, he was right. Living arrangements were a priority.

"Tomorrow?" James' tone was cocky, but his kiss was soft, prepared to follow her lead—their lead—as they cleared him a way back into the world.

Steve nudged in, bracketing her feet against James' calves, and said in his ear. "It'll be worth it."

She found both of their hands and squeezed.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The city of Tsaritsyn changed its name to Stalingrad in 1925 in honor of Stalin. In 1961, Khrushchev changed the city's name to Volgograd as part of his de-Stalinization program.
> 
> Russian naming conventions are a) complicated, b) difficult for Westerners to grok, and c) have changed since the end of the Soviet era (and the rise of the internet). I've tried to find a balance between authentic and comprehensible.
> 
> Because a number of people have asked me for a Natasha resource list, I thought I might as well include it here, too. They're listed in order of importance to understanding Natasha as a character.
> 
>  **Natasha canon worth reading:**  
>  Black Widow: Deadly Origin (2010)  
> Uncanny X-Men #268 (retold in Deadly Origin and Wolverine Origins)  
> Wolverine Origins #9 & 16 (2007, 2008)  
> Black Widow: The Name of the Rose (2010)  
> The Death of Captain America: Death of the Dream (2007)  
> The Death of Captain America: Burden of Dreams (2008)  
> The Death of Captain America: The Man Who Bought America (2008)  
> Captain America: The Man With No Face (2009)  
> Winter Soldier vol 1-3 (2012, 2012, 2013)  
> Black Widow (2014) ongoing series  
> Black Widow: Homecoming* (2005)  
> Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her* (2006)
> 
> * These Richard K. Morgan trades are triggery, gratuitously offensive, misogynist, and foul but at the same time say interesting things about what Natasha values and what tactics she's willing to use when she's only accountable to herself.
> 
>  
> 
> Annnd here is [a Tumblr link](http://sagesageness.tumblr.com/post/95140620652/here-is-a-secret-deeper-than-language-18250-words-by) for your reblogging convenience, if that's a thing for you. :D


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